I have a website selling electronics. This is a highly competitve category to sell in and my sales had shown it in 2006. Between Sept and Nov. 06, I was finally getting some sales. Credit cards were used to make the purchases, they were approved by my CC processor, I verified addresses of the credit card holders. All of these customers requested items to be shipped to a different address than listed as the credit card holder. (this turned out to be a big mistake) After verifing addresses I had the orders drop shipped in about 10 days.
In December I started getting chargebacks from my credit card processor. Almost all of the purchases were made with stolen credit card numbers. I have lost over $3000.00 from these thieves and has put my business in jeopardy. I know the addresses of two people where items were shipped. I have filed reports with law enforcement, Internet Crime Investgations. I had to file a report with my local police, not the police in the city that the thieves live in. My CC processor has all but blamed me for this scam and don't seem to want to help me. They are holding me responsable for the charges. The credit card companies of the stolen credit cards don't want to bother with solving this crime.
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT ELSE I CAN DO?
I have a few suggestions that I have learned from this incident:
1. when you get an order paid by credit card, don't trust that the card was approved by the CC processor. Verify the charge yourself with the credit card company. (you would think that you were paying the processor to do this)
2. Verify the address. Don't ship to another address other than the credit card holder. Under certain circumstances you can if you do an extentsive verification of the person doing the request. Be sure of the address before you ship. Explain to your customer for the delay.
2. Pay a little extra to have the shipper get a signature and verify the receipt of the order.
Even if you do all this, you may have to hold your breath for a month or two waiting to see if you've been scammed.
I know there is such a slim chance of getting some of my loss back, but Does anyone have any ideas?


